Flattening an email message

[Florian Lindner]

Hello,

I want to use some machine learning stuff on mail messages. First step is get 
some flattened text from a mail message, python's email package does not work 
as automatically as I wish. Right now I have:

> def mail_preprocessor(str):
>     msg = email.message_from_string(str)
>     msg_body = ""
>     
>     for part in msg.walk():
>         if part.get_content_type() == "text/plain":
>             msg_body += part.get_payload(decode=True)
>     
>     msg_body = msg_body.lower()
>     msg_body = msg_body.replace("\n", " ")
>     msg_body = msg_body.replace("\t", " ")
>     return msg_body

For getting a text from html I could use BeautifulSoup. Right now I'm still a 
layer down (encapsulation etc.) at RFC 2822 stuff. 

Does anybody knows about some package or code I can throw an email message at 
and get some kind of text from it? Attachments being discarded, HTML I can 
take care of...

Thanks!

Florian